How to Buy Property in Costa Rica as a Foreigner: The Complete 2026 Guide

Costa Rica is one of the few countries where a foreigner buys land on exactly the same terms as a citizen: no permit, no residency, no local partner, no trust structure. That is true, and it is the reason a lot of people arrive on this peninsula with their guard down. The process has fewer gates than home but different ones, and the ones that exist are the kind that cost you the property rather than a fee. This is the process as we run it in the Cóbano district, with the law cited where it matters and the numbers dated.

What a foreigner can and cannot own

Article 45 of the Constitution protects private property and Costa Rican law extends ownership to foreigners without distinction. You can hold titled land in your own name or through a Costa Rican corporation, and most of what we sell, hillside homes, jungle lots, farms and the houses in town, is titled land registered at the Registro Nacional, the National Registry.

The exception is the coast. Under Ley 6043 the first 200 meters inland from the mean high tide line is the Maritime Zone. The first 50 meters is public and cannot be built on or owned by anyone. The next 150 meters belongs to the State and is used only under a municipal concession of five to twenty years, and a foreigner cannot hold a concession, or more than 50 percent of a company that holds one, until they have been a legal resident for five years. Parts of Santa Teresa, Mal País, Montezuma and Cabuya sit in that band. We wrote a separate guide to beachfront and concession property because it is a different purchase with a different set of documents. If a listing says beachfront and a price that looks like titled land, the first question is which side of the 200-meter line it sits on.

The people you need, and what regulates them

An agent. Costa Rica has no real estate license. Anyone may call themselves an agent. What exists instead, since the anti-money-laundering reforms, is a requirement that anyone who receives commissions or handles client funds register with SUGEF, the financial regulator, which involves a criminal background check and residency or citizenship. Ask any agent, including us, for their SUGEF registration. It is not a competence test. It is the only public test there is.

A lawyer who is also a notary. In Costa Rica every transfer of real estate must be executed by a notario público, who is always a licensed attorney with additional notarial authority, and recorded at the Registro Nacional. Your lawyer should be yours alone, not the seller's and not the agent's cousin. Notary fees are set by the Bar Association's tariff at roughly 1 to 1.5 percent of the price, and professional fees carry 13 percent VAT.

An escrow agent. Never wire money to a seller's personal account. Escrow companies here are supervised by SUGEF as administrators of third-party funds and will ask you for the same source-of-funds documentation a bank would. Budget a few days for their compliance review before the deposit clears.

The process, step by step

1. Decide what the property is for. A home you will live in, a rental, or land you will build on are three different searches with three different due-diligence lists. On this peninsula they also point to different towns; our Montezuma versus Santa Teresa comparison is the short version of that conversation.

2. Offer and purchase agreement. Your lawyer drafts the contrato de opción de compraventa: price, deposit, contingencies, the due-diligence window and the closing date. Deposits of 10 percent into escrow are typical. A serious contract makes the deposit refundable if due diligence fails and non-refundable if you simply change your mind.

3. Due diligence, usually 30 to 60 days. This is where the purchase is won or lost. Your lawyer pulls the title report from the Registro Nacional and reads it for liens, mortgages, easements, annotations and pending litigation; matches the registered survey, the plano catastrado, to the ground with a surveyor if there is any doubt about boundaries; confirms property tax and municipal fees are paid; checks with the Municipality of Cóbano whether the land falls under a zoning plan and what it allows; and, on land near the coast, gets the official Maritime Zone delimitation rather than the seller's word.

Two checks matter more here than anywhere else in the country. First, water: a building permit requires a letter of water availability from the local ASADA or AyA, and the engineers' college reported in May 2026 that missing water letters are the single most common thing stalling projects nationally. A lot without a water letter is a lot you may not be able to build on, whatever the listing says. Second, environment: much of the peninsula sits in or beside protected forest and biological corridors, and a property that turns out to hold forest or wetland cannot be cleared under Ley 7575 regardless of what the deed says. Ask for a SETENA history if anything has been built.

4. Closing. The notary drafts the transfer deed, the escritura de traspaso, both parties sign, the notary pays the transfer tax and stamps and files the deed for registration. Registration itself takes a few weeks. If you cannot be in the country, a special power of attorney, notarized and apostilled at home, lets your lawyer sign for you; we close remotely for buyers routinely.

5. Corporation or personal name. Many buyers take title through a Costa Rican sociedad anónima or limitada, which simplifies later sale, inheritance and shared ownership. It also creates annual obligations: the corporate tax, the beneficial-ownership filing with the Central Bank, a registered agent and accounting. Your lawyer should walk you through both options before the deed is drafted, not after.

What it costs to close

The taxes and stamps are fixed by law; the fees are set by tariff and, in practice, negotiable at the edges.

Tax, stamps and notary together come to roughly 3 to 3.5 percent. With your own attorney and VAT the realistic all-in figure is closer to 4 percent, and on a $500,000 purchase $17,500 to $22,500 is the range you will see quoted. Custom on this coast is that the buyer pays; some contracts split the transfer tax and notary fee 50-50; everything is negotiable before you sign and nothing is after.

Paying for it

Nearly every transaction on the peninsula is priced and settled in US dollars by international wire into escrow. Financing exists but do not plan around it: banks such as BAC, BCT and Lafise lend to non-residents at roughly 6 to 9 percent in dollars, at 60 to 70 percent of appraised value, on terms up to 20 years, and the paperwork for foreign income is slow. Most of our buyers pay cash, borrow against a home elsewhere, or negotiate seller financing, which remains common here for raw land.

What you owe after you own it

Property tax is 0.25 percent of registered value a year, paid to the municipality, which also collects garbage and other fees. A property registered at $300,000 pays about $750.

Solidarity tax on high-value homes applies in 2026 when the construction value exceeds ₡143,000,000, about $319,000 at current rates, starting at 0.25 percent and rising in bands. Land alone does not trigger it; the house does.

Capital gains when you sell. Since Law 9635 took effect in July 2019 Costa Rica taxes the gain on real estate at 15 percent. A tax resident's habitual home is exempt. A property bought before July 2019 can elect a flat 2.25 percent on the gross price instead. A non-resident seller has 2.5 percent of the price withheld at closing as an advance. Older articles, including an earlier version of this one, said there was no capital gains tax on property held more than three years. That has not been true for seven years.

Rental income is taxable in Costa Rica, and short-term rental hosts must register with the Tourism Institute and Hacienda under Ley 9742, with platforms reporting host income to the tax authority from 2026.

Insurance is not compulsory but the national insurer and private carriers write earthquake and flood cover, and on this coast you want both.

Do you need residency to buy?

No. You can buy, own, rent out and sell on a tourist entry, which since September 2023 allows a stay of up to 180 days. Residency matters if you intend to live here: the Pensionado category needs a $1,000 monthly pension, the Rentista $2,500 a month or a $60,000 deposit, and the investor category is in a legal gap since the Law 9996 incentives expired on July 14, 2026, with the regulation's $200,000 floor now the working assumption. Our investor visa guide is the current picture. Residency also requires you to join the Caja, the public health system, at a monthly contribution based on declared income.

Why buyers choose this peninsula anyway

Because the constraints are the point. The Maritime Zone keeps the beaches public and the shoreline low. The forest law keeps the hills green. The absence of a coastal highway keeps Santa Teresa from becoming Tamarindo. Blue Zones researchers named the Nicoya Peninsula one of five places on earth where people live measurably longer, though the cantons the studies cover are in Guanacaste, north of the district we sell in; our Blue Zone article has the research and its limits. Tourism is real without being explosive: the country received 2.94 million air and sea arrivals in 2025, up less than one percent, and short-term rental data for the Cóbano district shows an average nightly rate around $291 at 36 percent annual occupancy, which is a solid supplement to ownership and a poor substitute for a business plan. Anyone quoting you double-digit gross yields should be asked for twelve months of statements.

If you want to see how this plays out on a specific property, send us the listing, ours or anyone else's, and we will tell you which of the checks above it will pass and which it will not.

Where these numbers come from

• Maritime Zone: Ley 6043, full text. Forest law: Ley 7575.
• Agents and SUGEF: CostaRicaLaw.com, real estate agent regulation.
• Closing costs: Quatro Legal; Global Law Experts on the transfer tax; Coastal Realty, 2026 worked example.
• Financing: Century 21 Costa Rica, March 7, 2026.
• Taxes: AG Legal, solidarity tax 2026; CostaRicaLaw.com, capital gains; ERP Lawyers on Ley 9742, July 22, 2025.
• Water: Revista CFIA, May 18, 2026.
• Residency and entry: Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería; Golden Harbors, Costa Rica residency 2026.
• Market: La Nación, January 15, 2026; AirROI, Cóbano, July 30, 2026; Blue Zones, Nicoya.

Tierra Tropical is a real estate agency based in the Cóbano district of Costa Rica's southern Nicoya Peninsula, covering Montezuma, Santa Teresa, Mal País, Cabuya, Delicias and Tambor. Nothing here is legal or tax advice; your own attorney's opinion on a specific property is the one that counts.